Letters from the Garden

Cottage

What’s brewing for the weekend

Ha! A second post on a Friday. That pretty much never happens here. Still, I thought I’d just do a little catch up on random goings-on and a bit of talk about the weekend. First off, last week I was on a radio show talking about my crown molding fail. I’m not sure Frank (the host of the show and ...

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DIY

Coming in for a landing: one big ol’ obelisk

Normally I am not one to rush through projects. I really believe in the adage that anything worth doing is worth doing well. But I recently threw that aside and just went for it on a little building project for the garden. I got a couple of goji berry vines recently and I am so excited for them. Not just ...

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Garden

The Garden Appreciation Society Week 3

Sorry this is late this week! The holiday weekend got me all cafloogered. Speaking of the long weekend, we had relatively horrible weather but I was still able to plant several containers. Honestly with as cold as it’s been, it was probably too early but at last count I had more than 120 containers of plants sitting around and I ...

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Garden

What do to with your plants after you get them home

Poor little plants go through so much in their lives. They are coddled and grown in the cozy confines of a greenhouse where they get the perfect amount of light and water. And them BAM! they are are thrown into garden or a container and left to the whims of the weather and the gardener. Most plants can handle a ...

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Garden

The Garden Appreciation Society Week 2

Welcome to Week 2 of The Garden Appreciation Society. Sounds like everyone made it through Week 1 without any emergency visits to their therapists, so I’d say we’re all doing a good jog at easing ourselves into bringing our flowers inside to enjoy in a whole new way. So tell the truth, especially if you’re reluctant to actually cut any ...

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Cottage

Whoosh! There goes the weekend

Sometimes when I disappear from the blog for more than a few days it’s because I have nothing to write about and I never want to bore you. But other times it’s because I’m so darn busy there is just no time to write. That’s been the story for the past week. I promise you posts on almost all of ...

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Garden

The Garden Appreciation Society — Week 1 (Join in!)

First of all, congratulations to Edie who is the winner of the DeWit bonsai tool kit. Edie, check your email! I have to say I loved all your comments so much. So many great stories of sentimental houseplants! And now, onto a bit of fun. Last week I told you about what I envision The Garden Appreciation Society to be ...

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The Impatient Gardener blog was started in 2009 and its library of posts includes practical how-tos, plant guides, favorite garden gear, successes and failures and much more. If you’re looking for something specific, the search function at the top of the page can help.

If you had told me last March when I wrote on this blog about my rather grand plan for a new vegetable garden that I would still be updating you on it nine months later, well, I probably wouldn’t have done it. Suffice to say, I had no idea what a big project I was […]

This post is a paid partnership with Lowe’s Home Improvement, but I’m responsible for all of the opinions expressed here as well as the horrific state of my garage when this all started. One of the last garden-related tasks of the year is the annual cleaning out of the garage. Well, not the entire garage. […]

Have you finished your Christmas shopping? If you’re like me the more appropriate question might be: Have you started your Christmas shopping? Yes, we’re officially down to the wire, but I am here to help. And to me one of the best gifts period, and the best last-minute gifts are books. Most people still have […]

If you are like me and you are just a tad behind on your winter containers, you might feel like you need to scramble a bit. One thing I’ve learned is that, especially around the holidays, scrambling leads to spending.  So in a nod to keeping things simple and affordable, here are some things you […]

Lowe’s Home Improvement partnered with me on this post to provide a big surprise to some great friends. All words, opinions and griping about the weather are my own. If you aren’t familiar with the Midwest, you might be confused by what you’re about to see. The fact is that there isn’t a lot of […]

First we covered practical gifts for gardeners, but now we head to dream gifts: the amazing, the luxurious and the downright absurd. There is one gift that I didn’t have a proper illustration for that definitely falls under the dream gift category in my mind: Someone to help in the garden.  1. Cheryl’s she-shed has […]

Judging by my overflowing email inbox this weekend, I guess holiday shopping season is fully upon us, and that means that it’s time for a few gift guides. And I’m starting it off with my guide to practical gifts for gardeners. By the way, many of these items might be on sale or be offered […]

Well this was not in my plan.  An early season snowfall has put a damper on my fall gardening plans and even worse, it has pretty much killed any desire I have to be in the garden. It’s just so hard to get inspired to garden when the option is getting your winter gloves dirty […]

More than once I’ve written here about the misconceptions I had about spirea. For a time it was, to me, the most boring of shrubs, the least interesting of what I call the “landscaper’s trio” of spirea, daylilies (almost always ‘Stella d’Oro’) and a (usually sickly looking) hydrangea. Somewhere along the line this combination

Bulb planting continues for me. I’ve been a bit pokey about it this year, just because the lack of a mid-fall warmup has me running a bit frantic in the garden. There’s lots of cleanup to be done, and some jobs, like digging dahlias seem to be taking longer than I planned. I have about […]

We’ve been enjoying a particularly beautiful fall here. Beautiful not in terms of weather, as gray days have far outnumbered those crisp, sunny fall days with royal blue skies, but the trees have put an amazing show. Last year, a late-summer drought stressed trees, plants and gardeners alike, dropping leaves to the ground before most [&hellip

This post is a paid partnership with Lowe’s Home Improvement, but all words, opinions and the recipe for the perfect s’more for non-marshmallow lovers are my own. If Mother Nature is feeling generous we’ll enjoy a long autumn with a few excellent Indian summer days mixed in for good measure. I know I spend a […]